Teen ‘Slender Man’ Stabbing Suspect Reaches Plea Agreement

Morgan Geyser, one of the two teens accused of stabbing classmate Payton Leutner in 2014 in
order to appease the “Slenderman”—a mythical beast conjured up by the internet—has reached a
plea agreement just two weeks before her trial was set to
start.

According to Buzzfeed News,
Geyser will plead guilty to the charge of first-degree
intentional homicide in exchange for prosecutors agreeing that
Geyser is “not criminally liable by reason of mental disease or
defect.” If this plea is accepted by a judge, Geyser will not
go to prison and will instead face up to 40 years in a state
psychiatric institution.

In 2014, Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier were accused of
stabbing their classmate 19 times in an attempt to become
“proxies” of Slenderman—a fictional character that is
tall, faceless, skinny and may or may not have tentacles for
hands. Slenderman is essentially a meme created by the
internet, photoshopped into black and white pictures, but he is
decidedly not real. Weier and Geyser, who were 12 at the time
of the stabbing, were tried as adults in 2016.

In August, Weier pled guilty to attempted-degree homicide as
a party to a crime, with use of a deadly weapon; she was also
diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia. Weeks before her
trial was set to begin, the judge in that case accepted her
insanity plea and found that she was not legally responsible.